Bench Press Hurts Shoulder
While simple exercises such as scapular retractions push ups and external rotation work are all great tools to utilize i ve found that performing soft tissue work directly prior to bench pressing can also be of great benefit.
Bench press hurts shoulder. The reasons why benching hurts your shoulders is a topic for another article but suffice it to say that shoulder pain usually isn t so much the fault of benching itself but rather the misuse and overuse of the exercise. A proper warm up is key for preventing shoulder pain during the bench press. These four muscles are the supraspinatus infraspinatus teres minor and subscapularis. Since they are also two of the most popular exercises it s no surprise that shoulder pain is common.
There s a good chance your bench press shoulder problems can be tracked back to excessive elbow flare and possibly also lowering the bar to your upper chest neck area instead of the lower chest. The bench press is a benchmark of your strength plain and simple. The most common reason that the bench press hurts your shoulder is a muscle imbalance. The bench press and shoulder press are the two exercises most likely to cause shoulder pain.
Bench press anterior deltoid pec strain. Many recreational lifters opt to emphasize exercises such as the bench press that target larger muscles like the pecs and biceps in the front of the shoulder. This is a common bench press injury with the anterior delt and pec becoming potentially shortened weak and painful. A frequent cause of bench press shoulder pain is an imbalance between the primary movers chest shoulders and triceps and the rotator cuff a group of four smaller muscles responsible for stabilizing the shoulder joint.
You should be able to make the following adjustments and get back on track. If you re benching heavy weight and not paying attention to these muscles you run the risk of muscular imbalances shoulder pain and getting stuck in a serious plateau. But if you ve gotten to the point where your shoulder hurts all the time or when you are trying to sleep you should probably hold off on the following recommendations and get in to see a doctor or physical. Here are the three most common bench press shoulder pain syndromes and what you can do to treat them yourself as well as how a chiropractor or therapist will treat them.
Perhaps the most common issue especially for men is shoulder pain stemming from the flat barbell bench press.